


the Fatherless, in Paradise

by verdenal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:37:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdenal/pseuds/verdenal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One way or another, the world is going to end. (mid-s5)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the Fatherless, in Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> Title shamelessly cribbed from Sufjan Stevens's "For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti".

The end of days isn’t the best time to try and form a meaningful and lasting relationship. Dean knows that already, but watching Sam and Ruby was like having a front row seat for the remedial class. He doesn’t trust Cas, besides, not fully, the first time he reaches out and Cas is there.

What they had done then, after Alistair, Dean didn’t have a word for, and still doesn’t. It wasn’t sex, by pure definition, and he doesn’t have a word in his terrifyingly extensive vocabulary to describe it. Cas still hadn’t quite figured out human interaction and human physicality, so his every touch was something strange and full of benediction in a way that made something deep inside Dean sing.

Back then, he figured it was an aftereffect of the painkillers. Now he knows it was his soul.

Even if he trusts Cas after, when he has to, as Cas gives and gives and gives without taking anything from Dean, who doesn’t know how to be on the receiving end of that kind of love, still, the apocalypse is the worst possible time for this. It isn’t like other hunts, where there’s a brief respite, the sweaty, bloody afterglow. When the physical fight ends the metaphysical one starts, and Dean doesn’t know if his soul is even worth fighting for.

But Cas comes to him, again and again, and for an angel made of angles who threatened to throw Dean back into Hell when they first met, he is surprisingly soft. Yielding, that’s the word Dean’s looking for. Cas is always there, but Dean always reaches first. Every night is their last night on earth.

;

The world might not end, after all, Dean realizes one night. Cas is pressed in against him, his breaths deep and uneven, almost graceless. They have a plan, now, and Dean feels some of the easy confidence he’s always had flowing back in. They’ll do it, him and Sam, without letting Michael or Lucifer or God or anyone have their way with mankind. They’re going to actually save the world, be the big damn heroes they’ve always wanted to be.

Nothing comes without a price, though; dealing with the devil is still a deal.

When the whole world doesn’t end, Dean’s will. He tries not to think about it too much, or at all, really, but it sneaks up on him in the night, when he’s too tired to run. 

Sam’s going to have to say yes. There isn’t a way around it; he and Sam and Cas and Bobby have looked for weeks and the only solution is for Sam to say yes. It’s not that he doesn’t have faith in Sam, God, the only thing Dean has faith in any more is Sam, but that he knows there isn’t a way everyone makes it out of this alive. Hunting doesn’t work that way.

And Cas, Cas, who’s so tightly wound about him that Dean thinks he’s trying to burrow beneath the skin, if he’s the only angel who helped to beat the Devil and save mankind, well, Dean imagines that getting to go back to Heaven is only the start of his reward. He won’t begrudge Cas Heaven; not when he’s seen what Cas is like without it.

“You think too loudly,” Cas mutters against Dean’s ribcage.

“Stop listening, then.”

“It’s impossible,” Cas says and props himself up on one elbow. Then: “I’m not going anywhere.”

Dean would like to pretend, for the sake of his image, that he has no idea what Cas is talking about, but that’s useless at this point, so he settles for pretending Cas didn’t say anything at all.

“Dean,” Cas says, clearly having none of Dean’s evasive bullshit, “Dean, listen to me. It is unlikely that I would be permanently recalled to Heaven.”

“They’ll let you go slumming every once in a while, then?” Dean knows he’s being self-indulgent, but if there was ever a time. These are their last last days.

Cas only curls his lip at that. “At the worst,” he says, his face back against Dean’s shoulder, “at the worst, you will be in Heaven one day, too.”

“I saw Heaven. Nothing to look forward too.”

“So you’d prefer Hell?”

“No,” Dean admits, quickly. “Maybe Purgatory. I have a few sins to work off.”

Cas huffs in something like a laugh, his breath hot against Dean’s skin, “The righteous man. There is more to Heaven than what you have seen. Heaven is,” he pauses, goes still, “there is something soft and blue in Heaven. There are places of rest.”

Dean remembers his time in Heaven too well. “And it’s cold, and painful.”

“Heaven,” Cas tells him in a tone that brooks no argument, which is fine with Dean, since he’s falling asleep, “is home.”

;

The next few days go something like this: research, research, research, bitchy argument with Sam about their plan, more research. It’s already not Dean’s idea of a good time, but, to make it worse, Cas corners him during breaks and in between marathon research sessions, in the kitchen or outside of the bathroom, even once outside, trying to convince him that Heaven’s worthwhile.

It’s after the fourth or fifth time, when Cas has told him that Heaven is infinite, that Dean snaps. “If that’s true, then tell me how all I found was how much my brother wanted to leave.” He keeps his voice down but Cas still takes a step back and his eyes go wide, and then sort of soft around the edges.

“There is more than Zachariah showed you, Dean.”

“It wasn’t Zachariah,” Dean mutters. He doesn’t look at Cas; he lets his gaze sweep out over the junkyard instead. “It was Sam.”

Cas touches his back and Dean shrugs it away with a long slow ripple of flesh and muscle beneath. 

“It isn’t Sam’s fault, or Zachariah’s,” Dean says, and before he can go on Cas adds,

“It isn’t yours, either. Heaven is not,” he sighs; Dean knows he is a difficult man, “Heaven is not a place of punishment.”

“Being trapped in my own memories sounds a lot like a punishment to me, Cas.”

“You wouldn’t be, trapped is not the right word,” Castiel sounds for once at a loss. “Heaven is not a set way, it is not a set place, or time, or sequence of events.”

“What is it, then?” Dean asks, and he can hear Cas sigh to his left. They should be getting back to work; the end of the world won’t wait for Dean to get his act together.

“It is,” Cas tells him as he goes back inside, “and that is what matters.”

;

Later that night, Dean is half-asleep with his face mashed into a pillow when Cas crawls in next to him.

“Where were you?” Dean mumbles into the sheets. 

Cas doesn’t reply. Instead, he tucks his face into the back of Dean’s neck and kisses the uppermost knob of Dean’s spine.

“Cas?” Dean presses and rolls over, bringing the two of them face to face, so close they’re breathing in each other’s breaths.

“Praying,” Cas says and ducks his head. There’s a lot in there he doesn’t say, Dean thinks, so he bites his own tongue and doesn’t say anything in response. He does scoff, though, and that gets Castiel’s attention.

“You,” Cas growls, “are impossible.”

Dean smiles in a way that he hopes is charming but he knows comes off more like he’s having digestive issues. It doesn’t stop Cas, anyway.

“You must be the only being in Creation who doesn’t want to go to Heaven.” After that, Cas takes a huge breath, one that makes his ribcage shudder, like it can’t be contained by that fragile—human—body, and Dean knows he’s in for it. He doesn’t mind too much; anything’s better than getting beaten senseless in an alley, but he’d rather not hear it, still.

“Cas, just,” Dean mutters, pulling Cas even closer, too close really, “just, shut up.” He kisses Cas, who clearly isn’t that angry, because he yields easily, soft and warm next to Dean.

They fall asleep like that, too close.

;

Cas talks in his sleep only occasionally; he’s still not used to dreaming, but it’s usually in Enochian or Latin or something that Sam says is probably Aramaic.

That night, though, Dean wakes to Cas whispering in English, too soft for him to really understand, but he can make out the word “Heaven,” periodically, which makes Dean chuckle. Cas is even arguing with him in his sleep. 

“Please,” he says, somewhere into Dean’s shoulder, his lips brushing the raised skin of his handprint.

Dean kisses Cas’s temple and whispers, “Yeah,” confident Cas won’t hear it, but he feels the curve of a smile against his arm as he drifts off again.

;

Cas wakes up before him and is all hands. Dean crack an eye open to watch Cas touch his shoulder, his elbow, the side of his neck. With every touch he gives Dean a place, a time: Greece when the gods still walked, all the idylls of Arcadia, the lakes of Ireland under the cross, French vineyards, the opulent courts of China, his mother hugging him in their kitchen, in 1982.

“All of these,” Cas tells him, hand on Dean’s hip, “all of these are contained within Heaven.”

Dean makes a sleepy noise of acknowledgment and wonders where else Cas is going to touch.

Nowhere, it turns out, because Cas just sighs and settles half on top of Dean. They should be getting up soon, but Sam hasn’t barged in yet, so Dean’s taking that as an excuse to loll around for as long as he can before he loses this.

“All of those?” He asks, loud enough that Cas can hear it.

“All of them,” Cas agrees without bothering to move.

“Anything else, or is it all just replays of humanity’s greatest hits?”

Cas doesn’t have a ready reply, and so Dean fazes back out of consciousness.

;

“There was a time,” Cas tells him, quiet but arresting enough to wake Dean up, “when everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

“That’s Vonnegut, Cas,” Dean mutters into his pillow, “you can’t fool me.”

“It is not any less true for that.”

Dean doesn’t bother to argue, just says, “tell me about it,” and lets Cas press the truth deep into his shoulder blades.

There is a peace at the end of the world.


End file.
